Stoopid coons

Last week was more "balance."

The first three-fourths of Sunday was just a mess. It was as if the Three Stooges were playing Fate, and all my orderly little plans were bumping into each other and going "nyuk nyuk nyuk."

The real pleasure of the day was at the end. My son was away for the evening, and I got to skin a raccoon we'd caught earlier. I don't take pleasure in killing them necessarily, but I felt less guilty about it when I recalled the one chicken that was beheaded outright, and the chickens and ducks that suffered shredded necks because of a renegade beastie who couldn't quite seal the deal. Most of the eventually died, and the one survivor won't be the same again.

The last time I skinned one, it was a hurried and mildly drunken affair. Last night, I took my time and ended up pretty swervy by the time I was done, too, but I think I did a good job. (One thing about "Natural Ice" beer - every swallow tastes like cheap regret, but that stuff packs a deceptive punch. I gotta be careful before I "come to" with a skinless cat in my hands. Hmmm...) My point is that I had the time to myself, worked with my hands and enjoyed giving myself over to a consuming task. I'm sure PETA members would prefer I took up model trains, but this is where we find ourselves.

Anyway, besides taking my time, I also did some other things differently: I hung the little weasel up in the air at a convenient height, rather than laying him in the dirt like I did last time, a silly mistake. I listened to my MP3 player and once I got going, the chore turned into a pleasant undertaking and time ceased to register. Before I knew it, I had a naked raccoon and it was dark.

Another thing I did differently: I took the skin all the way off his skull, and kept the cranium as a trophy. I've seen them boiled on TV to remove the meat and er, stuff. I tried it, and it doesn't smell real good, especially the next day.

This week, I've scraped and salted the skin, and I'm not real sure what to do with it now. Even better, we've trapped another raccoon. Anybody want a hat, or something? Sheesh!

It's all ca-ca

I'm feeling really down today, defeated. Yesterday was a lot of effort just to get what used to be the status quo back into sight, just on the horizon. Efforts that should have yielded a sense of accomplishment instead generated only frustration and misery.

Today things aren't much better. These feelings rarely last, but they always return. I'm still searching for an effective and appropriate way to handle them. My last method, throwing furniture and destroying my own property, were less than ideal.

Currently, I simply stew in impotent contempt for the entire planet and everyonethinginonit. And drink beer. It's not the ideal method, but it's what we've got today.

See you tomorrow.

Downside

The balance of life seems to be rigidly enforced lately. No good can be enjoyed without a price, a backlash.

Yesterday was a very good day; I slipped up to the mountains for a hike and some photos, and had a very good time. No beer last night, and I slept well and fully.

After such a pleasant chain of events, I am swept into the undertow of "balance," which asserts itself like cosmic retribution. My brother's illness is hammering him and what shreds of well-being he enjoys. My DSL is down because we're struggling to pay the bill. My son cherished a beach towel on the way to pre-school where he will play in the water on a hot day, and we forgot it in the car when I dropped him off.

When life kicks at me like this, it makes me want to kick back.

Open letter to John Bizarre

John Bizarre is a skilled writer, filmmaker and former comedian. His writings inspire me not only through their humor, but also through their idealism and calls to action. It is with respect that I formulate this reply to his recent notebook/blog entry. I'd write him directly, but I get the sense that he only desires selective and limited feedback, especially to avoid kooks. Maybe I'll send it to him anyway. He recently writes in part:

Look, I don't even know what to write anymore. 98% of Americans who take the time to go out and vote this November will actually feel good about themselves after having voted for a carefully packaged corporate candidate that has been promoted by a whore house disguised as a news channel.

To him, I'd say this:

John, you've written about the state of things as they are, and it's been effective. I have been moved to change my apathetic and lazy ways as a result. But there's more to the task. You want to know what to write? Here's a recommendation:

Write less about how everyone around you is a mooing bovine, and write more about how you have recently acted to change the world and country that you live in. Tell me how you toiled to affect the change for which you see such a desperate need. Describe how you came to settle upon a challenge, why it is important to the cause as you see it. Tell us how you came out of your ideological, West Hollywood ivory tower, got your hands dirty and took the fight to the stuffed shirts having the Big Laugh at our expense.

Communicate how you launched yourself alone against the hordes of the current system, or how you banded together with people exactly like yourself and/or wildly diverse; how you stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a tie-wearing Republican and a paunchy, unconvincing Elvis impersonator, trying to make a difference.

Tell us how the waves of your struggle crashed against the shores of indifference and the hideously entrenched status quo, and won the day like a White Knight with a big dick. Even better, tell us how they failed laughably, and how you found the guts and fire to press on, even when it seemed beyond hopeless.

It's not enough to document your perceptions from the outside, looking in. Actively join the fight. And if you have, tell us about that. That's what I'm waiting for you to write. Because the shit you've been writing has been done well, but done nearly to death. It's time for the next chapter.

Respectfully,

Tom Bickle

I think I will send it...

Vic Mackey is coming

The seventh and final season of The Shield begins this Tuesday, 9/2/08. I eagerly anticipate it.

Pushing my luck

I find that I'm less and less inclined to forcefully stated religious musings as time goes by. Couple that with blue-haired old ladies sending forwarded e-mails that I'm not interested in (and that I am mildly offended by) pisses me off, and you get what we had this morning.

Someone sent me an e-mail describing how people who have scorned God, including John Lennon and Bonn Scott, have been struck down by His mighty hand, or whatever. Plus, they did it by listing all recipients in the Cc: field of the e-mail. My reply is below. Since the environment from which the sender knows me is a professional one, I redacted a few of the sassier comments (in red below). What remains is still plenty cheeky:

Correspondent,

You're a wonderful person and I want to be respectful of your beliefs. Let me share some items with you, however:

First, when sending out an e-mail to a list of recipients, be sure to list their addresses in the "Bcc:" field (not the "Cc:" field); "Bcc:" stands for Blind Carbon Copy, and it will protect their (our) privacy by making it impossible for other recipients (including spammers) to see or abuse this information, while still sending the information to all on your list. There are dozens of addresses below, and they'll all get more spam because of e-mails like this.

Second, I would be more comfortable on the list below in black and red than the e-mail recipient list above. Please feel free to leave me off any "forwarded" e-mail you might send out in the future. I am happy to hear from you personally, but I hope to avoid recycled, fear-based, religious, hoogey-boogey propaganda.

Finally, Bon Scott's vocals weren't Satanic but were an allusion to crossing a dangerous stretch of highway to get to a bar. Further, the lyrics were co-written by Angus and Malcolm Young, who are alive and well today, and still rocking with a brand-new album out, called Black Ice. Highway to Hell launched their careers to a new high, solidifying their rank in the annals of music history. If this is God's punishment, then truly he is a merciful Lord. Check out http://www.ACDC.com for details.

I hope you understand. Have a great day, and I look forward to seeing you again soon.

I took the liberty of copying said e-mail to all the recipients in the list next to my name. I hope somebody benefits from an alternative point of view. Writing this e-mail sounded wrong, but felt right. Today, I'm going with what feels right.

Last night sucked

I got home to find out:

• Somebody left the propane barbecue "on" last time we used it, blowing dollars and a tonight's barbecue dinner out our ass
• The dog yakked on the carpet at some point during the day
• Somebody left the freezer open, thawing our food and overtaxing the freezer motor

Kid got on my nerves and I just wanted to go camping. Immediately.

Let's hope today is better. Otherwise, forward my calls to Spicer Meadow Reservoir.

Social butterfly

I am making an effort to reach out to the world around me. I have made contacts lately with political, artistic and commercial entities, and have generally made a pest of myself. I am trying to drum up interest, both my own and others', in events in my area.

I have sent messages in bottles out to the horizon. Some will come back, some won't, but I am working to open myself up to opportunities and change in ways that are new to me. I am coming out of my cave, if only a little bit, blinking and grunting in the harsh sunlight. It is an awkward effort, but I am learning to embrace these discomforts, as they are a key to a more interesting life.

Social butterfly - hmph. More like social pterodactyl - like a butterfly, but older, louder, out of place and hideously anachronistic. This is how you humans put down roots, isn't it? Make connections? Feels so odd...

Poop onna koilet

It's been about three days since a momentous event occurred at our house. My son pooped on the potty for the first time.

He's been peeing like a big boy for months now, but I had seriously begun to doubt number two would ever happen: we have been employing dynamic combinations of carrot, stick and Jedi mind-control for a long time, and been greeted by all the monolithic resistance a four-year-old boy can muster (and the little fucker can muster quite a bit, let me tell you).

One night, without a bit of advance prodding or fanfare, he just shut himself in the john. He emerged several minutes later to proudly proclaim that he "went poop onna koilet!" (As his mastery of the English language constantly and quickly improves, his childish imperfections disappear. I am quietly hanging on to his mild speech impediments as long as I can, and I celebrate the fact that he slightly mispronounces the word "toilet.")

He's gone from the stiffest of resistance, to pooping on his own volition and sleeping without a diaper, all in one day. My head still buzzes in amazement, especially at the whipsaw element of the transition.

Olympic-level disinterest

All I can say about it is: I just don't care about the Olympics. China's apparently a shamefully smoggy nation that backed out on all the pretty promises it made to entice the Olympic games into hosting there.

The games just have no appeal to me, and I don't think they ever did. It's like the run up to a Presidential election, which we'll see again soon enough: a bunch of bullshit that interrupts the true and best purpose of my television set: entertainment programming.

Boundless apathy; can't wait til it's over.

Screaming

Sometimes, when the music is up real loud, and the sound rampages through my head and it swirls into a formless cacophony, I hear sirens, babies crying or phones ringing. I don't know what that means, if anything.

CCTA

I've gone and joined a small political organization in my area. I'm not too sure what they're all about yet, but if they chase the rainbows they've advertised that they chase, it could be a worthwhile investment of time and energy.

Or, they could be the nuttiest gaggle of kooks this side of the Sierra Nevadas; but that's the gamble you take on any group of hominids these days, so what have I got to lose? I look forward to finding out.

Got my new HDD adapter, works well

I did finally get my hard drive adapter, and it works really well. True to my procrastinating nature, I have yet to download the data therein, which I have coveted so greedily ever since the Big Crash. I'm different.

Try, try again, to adapt

I bought an adapter recently to try and overcome the loss of data that occurred when my laptop failed and I was left wishing I'd made more recent backups. The adapter gizmo I bought should have installed inside my desktop machine's case and allowed me to use the laptop drive like a regular hard drive.

For reasons about which I'm still uncertain, it didn't work. The desktop didn't recognize the drive, as if I should done something different with the jumpers. Since I don't have laptop jumpers nor a simple/nearby place to get them, I went a different route.

I've gone and ordered a USB hard drive enclosure, that should give me similar functionality without the hassle of cracking the case and diggling with jumpers. Who needs that?

UFC for you and me

Another big-name UFC event tomorrow night, and I'm pumped to see it. I tried to get a couple of pals over to help me watch it, but they had contravening plans. Dicks.

So, I've got a line out for one or two other gents who want to watch sanctioned brutality and drink beer. And if they don't make it, I'll be equally happy to watch it all by myself. I like that I'm happy in my own company.

Dry

It's an odd thing, to blog about how much you drink, or how much you don't. I do odd things, though...

For the last several weeks, I'd zip home from work and crack open a beer, and several (less than six, invariably) of its little brothers. It gets to be a habit. Sometimes, it gets to be a little more than that. There are several things I've come to dislike about my afternoon ritual; chief among them, the bleached-out feeling my body has the next morning.

Not hung over, but certainly and significantly minus the zest for life. It feels very much like my vital organs have been thoroughly rinsed of some essential chemicals they normally produce, the ones that put a twinkle in my eye, and pep in my step. Like I said: not hung over. No nausea nor headache, and it leaves me with a perfectly reasonable amount of energy and alertness, but not a bit more. It occurs to me that if I didn't drink on such a regular basis, this effect wouldn't be so prevalent. Apparently, it's a cumulative efffect.

That, plus weight gain and low resistance to voracious snacking are enough to give one pause to look around and take stock of just how one got here. The truth is, I have no problem with chemically tweaking your mood or even consciousness. Coffee, pot, alcohol, any reasonable adult should be able to avail himself of these, as long as he keeps his head on straight. Perhaps I am straightening my head at this point.

But like I said, it's become a habit, and not an altogether good one. This is particularly unfortunate, as I am very much a creature of habit. It is similar but distinctly different from what I'd call an addictive personality. I get in my ruts and I stick with them, generally. But as I've gone along, I've looked for reasons to enjoy loosening up with a small gaggle of beers, and that's fine by itself. Now I find that I must reacquaint myself with the reasons for not drinking. I find it useful to list them here:

• The morning after - even when hangover is not a concern, I find that his milder, sneaky little brother (shall I call him "Hangunder?") is a regular, unwelcome guest the next morning, after as little as two glasses of wine. When I don't drink, I can greet the next morning with energy, optimism and mirth that delights others and myself. I am often that obnoxiously happy jerk that people love to hate. How can I give that up?
• The crash - after the period of euphoria and well-being pass, and they always do, I find myself tired, irritable and generally wrung-out. I justify it to myself by noting inwardly that I would usually be spent by this time of night anyway, so I'm really not missing out. There is truth in this marketing message from my indulgent self, but it is not absolute. Yes, I get tired at the end of the day even without beer, but it is not such a wearing and cranky fatigue as sets in after a few Heinekens.
• Constipation. 'nuff said.

So, although contemplating the benefits of "not drinking" seems at first a meditation of the blandest sort, it turns out to be a worthwhile endeavor. It reveals benefits that are subtle but run deep. They're worth exploring.

It's in all the papers - I love my wife.

I made this for my wife's MySpace Comments area:

An old enemy comes creeping back

What's my problem?

At my last job, as I've written before, I allowed an unhealthy frame of mind to dictate the structure of my work, allowed a cranky, negative voice to rent space in my head.

It's not all just my weak-mindedness, although that does play its part. It's a condition brought on by too much to do, the unwillingness to say 'no' to more projects when asked, and an inability to compartmentalize and maintain perspective under stress.

There, I said it. Typing it out makes it feel like a dirty secret, but I don't think there's anything to be embarrassed about. It's precisely that compulsion to deny a problem that exacerbates it. Follow that line, and before you know it, you get a repeat of two or three years that were among the shittiest in my life, culminating in the monstrosity that was early 'o7. Let's not do that again, shall we?

It causes me to lose what is probably the best asset of my personality: my sense of humor. I lose that, I might as well shoot myself. It's the only thing that balances out my cynicism, my negativity. I can easily imagine every good person in my life dropping me like a hot turd in that event.

What to do? Luckily, solutions are available.

Do more. One thing I have found to be as reliably true as anything else in this life is that if you want more, give more. Do more. Be more. Working to do less and less, avoiding work and responsibility creates an internal culture of fear and withdrawal, making it impossible to grow and break new ground. However, working to maintain a positive, even aggressive attitude, saying to the world: "I shall stop fearing the world; rather, let them fear what I may do" is hugely more useful and productive. It projects my focus outward, leaving less attention for navel gazing and fixation on the self, especially the negative aspects thereof.

I find that if I abandon the opportunity to goof off at work, to eschew procrastination, I can get through intimidating tasks more easily than expected. Putting my head down and actually doing what I'm paid to do allows me to reach a point where secondary, even leisure activities can be addressed without shame or unfavorable consequences. Sloughing off tasks is a seductive but poor habit to get into.

This is not the last word in pulling my head out of my ass. There must be additional answers and techniques involved with improving my workplace happiness and attitude. But, this is likely a cornerstone of a comprehensive solution. Good for me.

One more gift

I am very fortunate to have received the triathelete of birthday gift lists this year: lean and muscular, no fat, no waste. I've truly and sincerely valued everything I've gotten, from the small to the grand, and goodies continue to trickle in. One last thing I'd like though, is something I will give to myself: the gift of organization.

When I was younger, leaner, handsomer (really, it is possible), I was more organized. And a millionaire, I was very rich. Hey, it's my nostalgic moment, get your own if you don't like it!

One thing that was true though, was that I was organized. I knew where things were, or at least where they ought to be, should I need them. Back then, for a brief time, I was single.

As much as I'd like to pretend that I was some alphabetizing dynamo, it was more to the point to say that a) I had less stuff to spread out and lose, and b) I was the only one to move things around. I might (might?) get drunk and hide things from myself, but I was the only one to worry about.

It is only coincidentally true that I am now married and sloppy. Now, I am a disorganized slob, my home a disheveled wreck at a crisis point that I'd be embarrassed to show to a crackhead. I have lots of stuff (note to self: material wealth not the key to happiness), but as often as not I can't find a lot of it. This is just not the me I want to be.

In my defense, I am not totally shiftless. It is a busy life. I get lots of things done, things that matter. I just don't have this one thing that is an important piece of my psyche. I have an innate need to be able to find things that I know I have, and to use them without an inordinate amount of difficulty. I must accommodate this need, at least somewhat, if I am to be happy.

I have the tools of organization, I just haven't employed them. So, this year I've decided to work towards a life containing bare tabletops, indexed files and possessions that are grouped and arranged to the point where one doesn't have to move two of them to access a third. I hope to walk through a bucolic nirvana where stumbling over items is something does in inebriation, not with claustrophobic regularity. I hope to climb a mountain of dear belongings and outright junk and discriminate between the two!

I hope to become: more organized.

Creative cramp

Every workday (every good day anyway, and that's most of them), I sit in my car, going to and/or from work, and I wish... I wish I had a little more time to do the things that present themselves to my mind on such days. Draw. Videotape. Practice guitar/French/whatever. The trouble is, even when this free time wanders over and sits in my lap, I procrastinate.

Sometimes I procrastinate actively - I find "better" things to do. My favorite is housework. I'll do loads of dishes and laundry, pick up the clutter and maybe pick up a less pro-forma task or two. Often though, dishes are set, laundry is at a non-critical stage, and I will still sit and stare idly at the guitar, the French textbook, the camcorder and the whatever.

Sometimes, I procrastinate passively. Watch TV, browse the web or noodle around with something that has no possible redemptive value.

Every now and then though, something in my inherently self-defeating mind will fail, and I'll actually commence to creating something. I like those times. They're usually preceded by the unusual combination of a) a good idea, and b) the organization of said idea into a thumbnail, or some other structured planning. If I carry that structure long enough to sneak it past my own mildly destructive qualities, it's a fair bet that something (I consider to be) useful will come of it.

Those are good times. I should concentrate on improving that rough formula into a work ethic; right now though, UFC fighting is on, and I've been meaning to catch up on John Bizarre's website. He's very funny.